March 15, 2019
It’s awards season again and as the headlines from the Golden Globes, Oscars and Brits begin to fade, the spotlight is on an array of awards across the marketing industry. When we founded the World Media Awards, now in its fourth year, I felt there was a genuine need for a platform to celebrate the world’s best content-driven, cross-border advertising campaigns. Of course, the marketing and media industry is full of cynics and I’ve often had to stand my ground when detractors suggest that awards shows are nothing more than an excuse for ego-stroking and back-patting.
Being recognised for your achievements should be celebrated, whatever sector you happen to be in. Winning an award is good for business on a number of levels – it can boost employees’ morale knowing that they’ve contributed to something that has been acknowledged as exemplary work. It can raise awareness for your company, increase credibility and give you that competitive edge. But perhaps most importantly, award shows provide a benchmark to compare the performance of companies within any given industry. They praise the success of innovators, disruptors, those pushing the boundaries – and they deliver a standard for everyone to work towards.
As such, we are delighted that the World Media Awards have been included as one of the recently announced WARC Media 100 Rankings, alongside a number of other high profile award shows, including Adweek Media Plan of the Year, Cannes Lions, D&AD, Festival of Media, I-COM Data Creativity Awards, Internationalist Awards, M&M Awards, MMA Smarties and the WARC Media Awards.
The WARC Media 100 media rankings (the successor to the Gunn Report) are decided upon by a group of senior planners, strategists and media executives and they provide an unbiased standard for commercial creativity and media excellence.Based on the results of what are considered to be the most important advertising competitions around the world, the rankings allow agencies and brands to track and benchmark their performance against their peers in areas of creativity, effectiveness and media.
According to WARC’s David Tiltman, the award shows will be reviewed annually to ensure that the ones analysed for these rankings remain relevant, and reflect the opinion of the industry. So, not only is the WARC Media 100 a valuable tool for agencies and brands, it also keeps us, the award show producers, on our toes. If we’re upholding our end of the bargain and providing a platform that contributes to essential standard setting and measurement within the industry, perhaps even the most cynical marketer will admit that Awards Shows are more than just an ego-boosting jolly.